


100 Books

by Annie_Is_A_Contranym



Series: AM2015tumblrshorts [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mentions of Claudia Stilinski - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 08:26:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3202382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annie_Is_A_Contranym/pseuds/Annie_Is_A_Contranym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>100 Books AU, where the main character is completing the list of ‘100 Books to read before I die’ because their loved one has died. It's happy I swear...</p>
            </blockquote>





	100 Books

**Author's Note:**

> So this AM2015tumblrshort turned out not so short after all and I apologize for that. Hope you like it anyway.

                                                       

Laura pushed through the doors separating the kitchen from the rest of the diner, a huge grin spreading across her face. As she walked by Derek who was wiping down the counter where he’d been slicing tomatoes just moments before, she slapped him on the butt with her dishcloth causing him to scowl at her.

“Hey, Loser,” she whispered theatrically, even though they were the only ones back there. “Your boyfriend is back. Table seventeen. He wants one order of curly fries and a strawberry milkshake.”

Derek rolled his eyes as he dropped the basket of fries into the deep fryer. He knew better than to respond to Laura. Any hint of a reaction on his part would be taken as an invitation to declare open season on shots at the sorry state of his romantic situation.  So it was emotionally prudent to just keep his mouth shut. He did not need anyone making fun of his ridiculous crush. He knew how hopeless it was and how pathetic he seemed to his family.

He had to move out front to get to where the industrial milkshake machine was and he took the chance to glance over to table seventeen and the young man sitting there.

Stiles had been coming to the diner for years now. When Derek first came back from college with a brand new Business degree, everyone expected that he’d join the rest of his family at their property management firm.  The Hales owned a several large properties and portions of land in and around Beacon Hills which had proven to be very lucrative over the years. His parents, Uncle and other family members were board members for several local businesses and Peter was even on the local government Council. Everyone had expected that Derek would follow suit. That life was not for him though. After some personal issues as a teenager, he simply did not have the temperament for the cut throat business world.

Derek had simply wanted a straightforward, honest living that gave him a reason to wake up in the morning and left him tired but smiling when he went to bed at night. So when his mother mentioned they were going to sell off the tiny diner property because it wasn’t worth the paperwork they had to file every year, Derek leapt at the opportunity and used his inheritance from his grandparents to buy it (at a very reasonable price of course – he was family!) and thus was born The Diner.  Yes he knew it was a very boring name and no, Laura’s suggestion of ‘The Big D Diner’ was definitely not better. He was happy with the name. He was happy with the place. He was happy with the clientele. One said member in particular.

By the time he finished the milkshake and plated the curly fries, Laura was in deep conversation with Isaac, an actual employee. Laura did not worked there officially but liked helping out whenever she needed to de-stress. Derek seized the moment and took the food out to Stiles himself.

“Hey Derek,” Stiles beamed up at him, as he pulled the fries closer to him and stuffed a few in his mouth. “Sit with me for a couple minutes, if you can.”

Derek slid into the booth seat across from Stiles.  He pointed at the book on the table next to the milkshake. Based on where the book mark was, Stiles had just started it.

“New book?” he asked. “What is it?”

“’Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe,” Stiles replied. “I have to tell you, I am really getting into this one.”

“I remember enjoying that one many years ago.” Derek smiled. “That’s the Nigerian author, right? The one with the white Christian influence on the tribal ways?”

“Dude! No spoilers!” Stiles looked horrified. “I haven’t gotten that far into it yet. I don’t know what the book is about yet.”

Derek cocked an eyebrow at Stiles. “You don’t know? How did you pick this book then? It’s not run of the mill reading  for the American young adult. Most people I know who’ve read it, did so because they had to for school.”

“You called me an adult,” Stiles grinned.

“That’s what you got out of that?” Derek scowled.

Stiles just laughed even more. Derek loved Stiles laugh. Stiles laughed with his entire body and he radiated happiness when he laughed. Derek soaked up whatever he could of it, whenever he could. When Stiles first started coming in as a high school student, Derek would hear the laughter all the way in the kitchen and wonder at the sheer amount of joy contained that that single sound.  It didn’t happen often though. Only when Stiles friends came in with him and recently, since Stiles and his friends scattered to different colleges, when he was interacting with the staff at the diner, who had become his new friends of sorts.

Usually Stiles came into the diner to read. He’d come in by himself and tried to stick to the same booth as much as was possible (something about the best lighting and view – though Derek didn’t understand that. The only view he had was the kitchen whenever the employees walked through the doors). In the beginning, Derek was tempted to tell him that the Diner was not a library, but the truth was that he liked having Stiles there. He liked that Stiles sought out  _his_  place for comfort. He liked that every time he came back from school, Stiles’ time was evenly divided between his house, the Diner and hanging with his friends. He especially liked looking out from the kitchen and seeing the handsome young man with the pale speckled skin, pink lips that invited sin and those long gorgeous fingers wrapped around a cup, a glass or cutlery. He liked those whiskey eyes and the way the light sparkled and danced within them.  He liked how once Stiles opened the book, he felt safe enough in the Diner that the rest of the world just faded away.

Stiles sighed and said, “I’m doing the hundred book thing.”

“What?” Derek had no clue what he was talking about. “Hundred book what?”

“It the “100 Books to read before you die” thing,” he explained. “People make a list of a hundred recommended books and then proceed to read each one before they die. It is kind of like a bucket list thing.”

“Ah,” Derek got it now. Well almost. “So how did Achebe end up on your list if you don’t know anything about the book? Did someone recommend it?”

The laughter drained out of Stiles face and demeanour.  Suddenly the air around them felt a couple degrees cooler.

“Yes but also no?” Stiles half answered. “The list isn’t mine. My mom…well umm..she created it and I don’t know how she came up with the books. Only I know she loved reading. And sometimes I would lie with my head in her lap and she’d read me bits and pieces and we’d laugh and it was the best.”

The young man’s eyes grew shiny with wetness and he brushed it away with the back of his hand.

“I loved listening to her read. I had a copy of the list and I would cross off each book as she got through them. But then she died. And she never got to finish the list. I got really mad about that. She never asked for anything. There wasn’t much that she wanted. But she wanted to read those damn books and it’s so unfair that she never got to finish the list.”

Stiles’ tears were leaking out a little and Derek could feel his own emotion welling up in his eyes.

“So I’m reading them for her.” Stiles continued. “I read them, then I visit her grave and have these long conversations about what I liked, or how shitty they were and how she really needs to reconsider her taste in literature.”

Derek smiled at that, even though he felt his heart was breaking just a little. He always wondered what it would be liked to be on the receiving end of Stiles love and now he knew that not even Death could diminish the capacity of Stiles’ heart. He knew he probably fell a little more in love with Stiles with every encounter (it had been so sneaky and gradual, he couldn’t tell you when Stiles had stolen his heart) but listening to this – this labour of love on Stiles part was doing strange things to his very soul.

“You must love her so very much still,” he reached across and wrapped his fingers around Stiles’ and gave them a soft squeeze before releasing them and pulling his hand back.

Stiles rewarded him with a watery grin and a nod. 

“I’m almost done too,” he said. “This is book number ninety-nine. And I am fucking scared to read the last one.”

Derek frowned in confusion.

“It’s like I’ve had this continued relationship with her for years because of the list,” explained Stiles. “You know? Reading them and then sharing the plot summaries, and the writing jokes and what some of the critics have said about them…for years I’ve always had so much to talk about.”

Derek snorted and Stiles side eyed him.

“Yah yah Hale. Laugh it up. I know you think I never run out of things to talk about, I’m serious here. Once I’m done, I’m afraid I won’t have a reason to talk to her as often and then I’ll visit less and less until I don’t visit her at all.”

By now Stiles was wringing his hands together and looking down.

“Hey,” Derek said softly, drawing Stiles attention and his eyes back. “That won’t happen. And as much as I grumble about it, it has nothing to do with how much or how frequently, you talk. She is a part of you, like your laugh, or your breath or your heart. You won’t ever lose her because you won’t let yourself lose her. If she were alive today, your relationship would have kept changing and evolving. It’ll be the same thing now. Your relationship with her will change and evolve. You can’t lose her Stiles. Not even death has made that happen. The only thing her dying did was change the dynamics of your interaction.”

Stiles was looking at Derek as if he were the best and brightest thing in the universe and Derek had never felt so complete in his life.  _This was it_  he thought. Stiles looked as if he was going to say something but Laura’s voice over the back of the booth interrupted whatever that might have been.

“Hey Der! You’re needed back here in the kitchen! You have customers to keep happy!”

Derek sighed as he looked at Stiles and began to slide out of the booth.

“Duty calls,” he griped and Stiles smiled nervously at him in understanding. Talk about a moment lost. Of course Laura would ruin it.

He began to walk away and then turned around and asked, “What is book one hundred anyway?”

" It’s ‘Lean on Pete’ by Willy Vlautin."

The name struck a bell with Derek but before he could say anything else, Laura called out again so he continued to the kitchen. There were several orders back to back and by the time Derek was able to head out front again, Stiles was gone. He couldn’t help but feel disappointed. He honestly thought they had been on the brink of something and now it was lost and they were back at the starting block again. He trudged back into the kitchen to find Isaac waiting on him. Isaac pulled out what seemed to be a folded piece of paper from his pocket.

"He’s gone but he left this for you."

Derek took the paper from Isaac’s extended hand and slipped it into his own pocket without looking at it. For the rest of the day, he could feel it burning against his leg like an ember or a spark but he refused to let himself look at it. It wasn’t until he got home to his apartment that night that he pulled it out and set it on the table. He looked at it for a long time and then left it there to have a shower, have a cup of tea and write up a list of supplies to get for the diner the next day. All evening the folded note sat on the table waiting. Finally he grabbed it on the way to bed and then once he was under the blanket, he opened it.

'Derek, thank you. For today and every day I'm in here. You have no idea what your friendship means to me. I am back at school for the next couple of months but here's my number. Text me sometime. You know, if you feel like it.”

Underneath the neat scrawl was the number for Stiles cell. Without thinking about it, Derek reached over for his phone and programmed the number into it. On added impulse he fired off a quick text.

To Stiles:  **This is me, Derek, texting you. Because I feel like it.**

Stiles texted back immediately with a smiley face and that began a different type of friendship over the months Stiles was away. Derek thought of Stiles often and the way things were changing between them. They talked about everything and there were times he thought Stiles was flirting with him. He wasn’t sure though so he never pushed. Then one day he was at the farmer’s market and there was a booth of used books and he saw it. Book one hundred. He picked it up, flipped it open and then bought it immediately. He thought about keeping it until Stiles came back but then changed his mind. Book one hundred was going to be an emotional event for Stiles, maybe he wouldn’t want anyone else there at the time. So he wrapped and shipped it off with a little note to Stiles at his school. He wondered what Stiles would say to him once he got it.

Stiles apparently had nothing to say to him. Weeks went by without a text from Stiles - not even in response to the texts Derek had sent his way. Eventually, he stopped checking his phone every five minutes. Eventually, he stopped hoping. Derek wasn’t surprised he’d fucked this up but he did wonder what it was that did it.

Then one quiet day at the diner, he heard a shout from out front.

"Derek Hale, you asshole! You get out here right now!"

Stiles? What the hell? Derek wiped his hands on his apron before untying it and setting it aside. When he went out front, he found Stiles with the book he’d gotten him, book one hundred, in his hand. Stiles looked close to tears and Derek wanted to hug him.

Stiles hit him in the chest with the book.

"How?" he asked Derek, pushing up into his space, into his face. "How did you…? Do you have even a clue of what it was like to open this and see what was written inside?"

Stepping back, Stiles flipped to the dedication page and pointed to the barely legible faded inked handwriting.

                                                                      

"Derek, I know she had the book. I remember her talking about why the first book she bought on the list was going to be read last. But it got mixed in with the Goodwill stuff when my dad finally let go of some her stuff." Stiles was crying freely at this point. "I’ve looked for it for years. I posted an ad on Craigslist about it. I never thought I’d find it. And then some asshole that I’ve been in love with since I was a junior at high school, who I’d finally gotten enough courage to give my number to, and I was wooing slowly with witty banter and flirty texts, sends me a gift in the mail and it is the most important thing anyone could ever give me. Derek, I couldn’t find words to express what I felt. I started a hundred texts and deleted them all cause they were just wrong. The moment I could, I jumped in my jeep and drove back here - back to you. Fuck I love you, you asswipe, and this book? This book says you fucking love me too."

Derek was stunned.

"I knew you were flirting with me," he said and Stiles broke out laughing.

"That’s what you got out of that?" Stiles shook his head smiling as he positioned his body right up against Derek’s. He looped his hand around Derek’s neck, relaxing as he felt Derek’s hands automatically come to rest on his hips. He reached up and kissed Derek, a soft chaste kiss that was perfect for their first kiss. As they broke apart, Stiles rested his forehead against Derek’s.

"Wanna read a book with me?" he asked Derek in a husky whisper. "It may take a long time get through it."

Derek pressed another gentle kiss on Stiles’ lips before replying, “I do love reading in bed.”


End file.
